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I also saw this video, and constructed my own board. Mine sits in a drill press vise, mounted to a bench grinder stand. I use a metal pipe across two folding chairs as a wire dispenser (materials on-hand, requires no construction, easy takedown).

My version does not suffer from the need for multiple jigs, however. The alterations I have made allow for interchangeable coiling heads, with one larger, main guide hole for the rod, which sits between either side of the coiling head. In seconds, I can remove one head and swap for another, giving me a perfect fit for any mandrel I use.

I am also brainstorming ideas for an "infinite length" coiler. In the device I propose, one would start a coil in the traditional manner, remove the mandrel without cutting the coil from the spool, flip the mandrel around and slide it back into the coil, fitting it to the board with a cotter pin, then engage four high-tension rollers around the coil. These rollers could be belt-driven by a single power source. With the wire pinned between the rollers and a now free-spinning mandrel, rotating the rollers would force the coil to continue spinning, and the wire would continue coiling until the spool ran out.

Neither does mine. The jig works fine for mandrels from 1/2" down to 3/16" and smaller. Smaller mandrels ride in the bottom of the hole and are kept in place by the tension of the wire. All I have to do to switch mandrels is to loosen the chuck, switch mandrels, and then tighten again.

TheOldWay, the basic idea behind powered infinite-length coilers that I've heard described features a power feed right at the mandrel, something like electrically driven rollers of some kind, a short stub of a mandrel, and a couple of rollers disposed around the other side of the mandrel more or less, to bend the wire around the mandrel. The formed coil emerges from the apparatus 80-90 degrees from the direction of the wire going in, which seems to be the key to making the machine work. Something not quite perpendicular encourages the wire to take the path of least resistance and thus coil reliably in one direction.

I'm not sure that the mandrel rotates at all to take the wire up; I don't think it would have an effectual grip just by itself. Now if those bending rollers I mentioned are also powered and also pressing upon the wire feedstock, then the stub mandrel ought to rotate also, and the wire get both pushed and pulled through the bending process.

Gordon Osterstrom, who has a small business in mail-order mail which he welds -- weldedchainmail.com, obscurely enough! -- has a war story about coiling a big batch of titanium wire through his coiling machine. Well, the phone rang. He stepped out of his shop to answer. Took a lot more time than he thought and was mighty distracting too. When he stepped back into the shop, he found it was doing its level best to recreate the Laocoön Group sculpture from Classical times -- there were snakes of coiled Ti everywhere. He eventually got it all used up, but I think it took years.

For manual coilers, the timesaver becomes in the main longer mandrel lengths, up to about an absolute maximum of six feet/180cm, using a free-moving mandrel with a fixed feedblock. Certainly the substitution of a 4-foot mandrel for a 3-footer cuts reloading time by 25%, and will shave some time off the coiling part of the cycle too, but I couldn't quantify it confidently. Five percent? Ten? Not confident at all, but it's in how the interruptions are reduced along with the startings and stoppings. Longer mandrels yet improve coiling times in proportion.

The other timesaver is to smooth up the handling of your wire supply, either by mounting wire reels on axles for swift takeup, or by putting bare wire that isn't shipped on reels on a wire jenny, either purchased from a hardware or fence place, or homebuilt and looking faintly like some wooden ferris wheel or vertical whirligig. The wire supply on reels should be a few feet separate from the mandrel and feed block to ease the passage of the wire from reel to mandrel.

With the coiling jig I have set up, it takes me about 30 seconds to remove a finished coil and start a new one. I currently have to cut the wire feed from the coil, and cut the start of the coil from the mandrel, slide off the coil, stick the wire feed back into the mandrel hole, and manually start the first rotation by turning the drill chuck by hand.

Now...that could certainly be sped up. If I got slotted mandrels, for instance, I could remove the second cut entirely, as well as speed up the start of a new coil. By putting a slight angle on the wire feed, as it leaves the third roller, I would prevent backwinding, thus removing the need for the manual start.

For what I need, for right now, it works. I totally agree with cutting out wasted energy/time in every area, eventually, but for now I have to focus on other things. I would probably spend more time thinking up ways to speed up the process than I would save in doing so.

I'm curious about the wire jenny, though. I saw the tutorial, and I understand the principle, but how well does it work with TRL coils? The last run of stainless I purchased from them (30 lbs, I think) became hopelessly tangled about every 5 feet or so, which definitely increased my production time. I discovered that the wire, as it was taken up by my coiling jig (which was, at that time, a pair of shaped wooden blocks), was not dispensing from the top, as it should have been. Instead, it seemed like the top loop invariably dropped down into the middle, somewhere, where it proceeded to close down on the rest of the wire, preventing any further coiling.

I definitely like the idea of being able to dispense wire without buying their spool option, but how could I prevent a situation like this occurring with the wire jenny? Was it a poorly processed coil of wire? Did I do something breathtakingly unintelligent when handling the coil? Could the same thing happen with these wire jennies?

What a wire jenny does is become an adjustable reel. Your wire is coming shipped to you in large coils about the diameter of a bicycle wheel, right? Yeah, takeup from such coils is distressingly random.

I keep that problem not completely cured but under control by snipping lengths of wire off that are about long enough to fill the mandrel up -- on a 3-foot rod that's about five-six turns around the supply coil. That mostly keeps things simple. I don't have a jenny, so I do that, and keep an eye on the other end of the wire, figuring that for the risky part. Safety gogs are a good thing; don't play the odds with your eyeballs. You only got two, and they're delicate.

A manual turn to start won't be needed if your mandrel is free to angle from the beginning. With the eyescrew feedblock I use, that's how I start 'em every time -- slant the mandrel, then hit the trigger kind of light (variable-speed 3/8 drill), and the coil reliably builds without a pause at the beginning. Try it, you'll like it, as the old Alka-Seltzer guys said.

Notch-&-washer mandrels are also swift to unlatch and remove a coil with. For the determined no-waste guy, a little time on each end of the coil with slipjoint pliers pushes each wire end into place to become part of a couple of links. Yay, no scrap.

You can keep a 30-lb coil all in one piece, or cut it into portions if you figure they'd be more manageable. A lot of the time it's the sheer weight of the supply coil that won't let the wire pass from supply to mandrel, and short, cut segments do fix that.

Of course you're finding, if not simply cutting, an outside end on the big supply coil, right? That works well with jennies once you have the wire coil hung on them. Jennies may turn horizontal or vertical.

I take a hybrid approach. I have a horizontal jenny cobbled together from some wood and held in a heavy cast patio umbrella stand. It works, but is not stable enough for the speed at which wire is dispensed when power winding.

When I get a coil of wire I want to use, I put the coil on the jenny and then grab one of my empty spools, attach a handle, and transfer the wire from the coil to the spool. Takes about 5 minutes to do 10-15 lbs of steel wire, and is a little bit of a workout, but much easier than taking care of the tangled mess I used to wind up with

If you like, I can try to take photos next time I transfer. It's sort of a MacGyver process, but it works.

Well, my solution is simple: Buying the base metals ALWAYS on spools - it's simply the safest method. For the materials that come in lower amounts and are delivered as coil, I follow Konstantin's method, to cut wire amounts off the coil, that will fit on a mandrel when coiled. Medium amounts of coil delivered wire are wound on a previously emptied spool before use. And when I use larger amounts of salvaged wire, I put it also on an old, previously emptied spool. Note that in latter case the usually several existing lengths of wire are NOT drilled together to a continuous string, but held there as separate segments, as in case of power coiling that connection point can become dangerous when it approaches your coiling jig before you can react and stop - the latter is imporant for people that continue to insist on using their hands as 'jig', despite the fact that this is dangerous...

The basic rule for me is: Safety beats momentary productivity, as a simple accident will destroy all productivity gains reached by omitting safety. I have only two hands, and only two eyes. They are irreplacable tools. So I protect them.

Human societies are like chain mail.
A single link will be worth nothing.
A chain is of use, but will break at the weakest link.
A weak weave will have the need to replace weak links.
A strong weave will survive even with weak links included.
-'me

Konstantin: I am NOT innocent - If coiling BA from factory-wound welding wire spools, I HAVE sometimes my left hand at the wire, to steer or give it more tension. But I use
a) a reliable braked feeder spool mount (that avoids wire kinks)
b) a scrap leather strip and NOT a glove (I told frequent times why)
c) a whip-safe coiling jig made from steel (I told as well)
d) never hand tensioning when coiling Steel/Ti (I surely told also why)...

Human societies are like chain mail.
A single link will be worth nothing.
A chain is of use, but will break at the weakest link.
A weak weave will have the need to replace weak links.
A strong weave will survive even with weak links included.
-'me

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